A Networked World

There's a reason that "Everything in your house is getting cheaper to buy"

The prices of durable goods have been falling pretty steadily since peaking in 1997, and now they are as cheap as they were in 1988, after adjusting for the constant improvements manufacturers have been making to their products.

What’s striking is how pervasive the price declines are. It’s not just a few items that are pulling down the average; prices are falling for almost every sort of durable good that consumers buy.

via www.marketwatch.com

There are 2 reasons that prices fall.

In times where efficiency or productivity or new processes or newly discovered, easily accessible resources are having their major effect, the prices of the products or services they provide will fall because the absolute cost of making them is being actually reduced, but this study accounts for those improvements. There are no new processes or massive new resources being discovered and put into service, especially not across the board.

And the lastest survey of American productivity show that it is falling, not rising.

There is another reason that prices fall and that is when the incomes of the customers fall. And in real terms, American incomes, except for the 1%, are about the same as they were in the 1980's. So prices have to fall to match them.

The reason they have not fallen earlier is that the difference has been made up with debt. But consumers have finally reached the point where they can no longer fool themselves into taking on more debt, or they are just plain maxed out, even by the corrupt standards of the banking system.

The second case has another facet; it is the indicator of a deflationary economy.

As wages fall, prices have to chase them down, but because each seller is still trying to maximise their profit, then their income, then finally their survival. Because they try to brake their fall, the prices always remain higher than the customer can actually afford so they inch down some more, preceded by the wages that companies pay their workers who are then supposed to be able to keep buying the products they make.

This is a deflationary spiral and the next phase is the failure of the companies that make this stuff. People like The Automatic Earth, Steve Keen, Chris Martenson etc have been predicting this for over a decade and the process is playing out pretty much according to their models. But those who are terrified of deflation, and that should be all of us, WILL NOT talk about it honestly.

If we refuse to talk about it, we can't even attempt to deal with it. So will will have to face it alone. NOT a good scene.

The end of climate

One of the reasons for coming back to NZ from Australia is that we believed those meteorologists who, for a decade, had been saying that climate change would hit Australia harder than almost anywhere else in the world. So, while American denialists are crowing about how cold its been so "global warming is a lie", we get this;

Heat pushing farmers beyond limit

Vast tracts of central and northern Australia are gripped by an unrelenting drought that is decimating cattle herds and threatening to force pastoralists off their land.

Scattered rain has fallen over the past two days across some dehydrated parts of Queensland, and a searing heatwave that drove temperatures into the high 40s is now easing.

But weather forecasters see little chance of drought-breaking rains before autumn, with temperatures expected to remain above-average until March at least.

The heatwave pushed the mercury to more than 48C in the hottest parts of the state, dropping birds from the sky and killing thousands of fruit bats in Queensland and New South Wales.

via www.nzherald.co.nz

Some climate bloggers are still casting around for more appropriate terms than global warming, even if that is literally the truth and the simplest statement of what is happening, "climate change" doesn't seem to cut it as conveying enough urgency and the other day I saw someone trying "climate disruption" as well.

I'm tending towards "the end of climate". The whole point of even discussing climate is that it gives us a framework for making decisions about water management, what to grow and where etc. Its a statistical, backwards-looking tool that has depended on the inertia of the global weather systems that have reliably cycled over years and decades, producing similar series of warm, wet, windy, cold days that we have called seasons and on which we have come to rely.

I say we can';t rely any more on the past being a predictor because the global heat management system has become chaotic, all the patterns are breaking down. Last year at this time we were entering the worst NZ drought in 70 years while people were drowning in Australian floods and catchment dams were being spilled to stop them over topping. Since then we have had the wettest May on record around our place, followed by a mini winter drought, some rain, then another dry stretch in spring.

This year the Aussies have returned to relentless drought, Chicago has been colder than Antarctica and we are having the perfect summer with a few days of fine warm weather followed by a day or so with rain. It couldn't be better, even the temperatures have been in a range that has kept mildews and moulds at bay, although the insect pests are a bit higher than before, I think.

Like most people around here, I was expecting another drought, which is why we sold off 3 of our 5 cows and had several dams and ponds dug. We didn't expect them to fill till next winter and when I bought a bag of grass seed to get some cover on the bare earth, the guy at the store said it was a waste of time, that I'd be back for more in Autumn. I agreed with him, but I also said that, although I was expecting a drought, nowhere is it written that we have to have one. I sowed the grass and a lot of it is growing well. It will need more in autumn, but for now it was worth the bet.

And the dams are nearly full.

Pacific weather systems are driven by the southern oscillation index which, for a couple of years now, has been in neutral, neither pushing one thing nor another. I saw it called "La Nada" rather than El Nino or La Nina. The bad news is that La Nada predicts nothing at all, any kind of weather is possible.

Which means we have to farm and garden for every eventuality, expecting some of the bets to fail. That is going to drive up the cost of food even more because for every spud or apple we harvest, maybe 3 other bets will have failed. That is food insecurity.

Just don't look for anyone in the public eye even beginning to broach that conversation, let alone talking about the end of climate. 

Gotta love the Swedes

From OilPrice.com comes this delicious headline, "Sweden has Run out of Rubbish for Waste-to-Energy Industry"

As a result of overzealous recycling, the nation of 9.5 million citizens must now import rubbish from other countries in order to feed its waste-to-energy incineration power plants. Each year the Scandinavian country imports 80,000 tonnes of garbage, mostly from Norway, to fuel homes and businesses.

via oilprice.com

While at one level its amusing and we can admire the Swedes' intelligence and ability to stick with an idea, it raises a problem that I have been harping on about for a long time. Right now we have a lot of people trying to figure out how to turn the vast amounts of waste we create into something useful, from insulation and other building materials to methane and other forms of energy.

In the medium term, however, that is a dead-end strategy because the waste stream itself is dependent on excessive, unsustainable consumption. As the Global Financial Crisis continues to roll out and become an increasingly economic one, our ability to generate waste streams will diminish; we will buy less stuff and that we do buy will have less packaging and we will throw out less of it.

Anyone trying to create a busines based on that waste is NOT an environmentalist nor have they thought through the whole process, they are every bit as invested in our failing waste-producing economy as the worst waste creator, literally.

Its a good way to start cleaning up the environmental damage that landfill is doing, but its also creating an even more concetratedly toxic material in the contaminated ash that is being shipped back to Norway. If all the Norwegians do is bury the stuff, they are lining up for an even worse problem down the track. At the very least it needs to be baked into building materials in a form that wont leach the heavy metals etc, or vitrified.

And then there's the energy budget. Right now its trucks burning diesel carting this stuff back and forth, they are talking about shipping stuff to and from the Italy, Romania and the Baltic states, much, much more diesel and then the energy costs of making the ash safe. I'm betting that quite soon we will reach a point where burning the diesel to make electricity will be financially better than moving the waste, so the only net benefit will be environmental, and that will be limited. If the sending nation has to pay dfor the transport they will very quickly decide that trading even more of their environmental standards will not only be preferable, it will be the only affordable option.

We are now in the phase of the process where we will reach the limits of every economic and energy strategy very quickly. This is just more evidence that the Club of Rome was right, we have reached the limits to growth and now we are trying to stave off the collapse instead of reorganising ourselves around the new reality.

Hell, we aren't even starting the public conversation about that.

Not an Arab Spring - More Like a Winter

I've been a fan of Gail Tverberg's stuff since I first came across it on the late Oil Drum. Gail is not an oil expert, she's an actuary, she specialises in statistics and data and demographics and she sees stuff that most of us miss.

Like this little ball of dynamite from Syria

Syria’s oil production is dropping. The drop between 1996 and 2010 reflects primarily the effect of depletion. The especially steep drop in the last two years reflects the disruption of civil war and international sanctions, in addition to the effect of depletion.

When oil exports drop, the government finds itself suddenly less able to pay for programs that people have been expecting, such as food subsidies and new irrigation programs to support agriculture. If revenue from oil exports is sufficient, desalination of sea water is even a possibility. In Syria, wheat prices doubled between 2010 and 2011, for a combination of reasons, including drought and a cutback in subsidies. When basic commodities become too high priced, citizens tend to become very unhappy with the status quo. Civil war is not unlikely. Thus, oil depletion is likely a significant contributor to the current unrest.

via ourfiniteworld.com

In 30 years, Syria's population nearly trebled but its ability to provide for that population has been shrinking for exactly half of that time. That makes reral sense as a driver of unrest and civil war. 

Further down the piece she applies the same analysis to Egypt and Yemen and Saudi Arabia. In February 2004 I posted a piece (Now apparently missing from the blog) called "Did we just go over the hump" about why I thought we had reach global peak oil as Saudi Arabia gave all the political signs of no longer being able to pump the stuff at will. 

I've had no reason since then to change my opinion and endless yapping about fracking being a game changer etc is just that; you don't spend billions squeezing out every last drop if you could spend millions to get buckets-full.

Oh, and Norway is about to get a right wing government in part because they have been able to blame the current one for "wasting the oil opportunity", just as the UK did in the 80's.

In every case, countries that find significant oil piss away the opportunity, they talk and act as if this finite resource is unlimited and time after time, within a single lifetime, it proves not to be the case. But apparently we have zero ability to learn from the mistakes of others, we have to do it all over again for ourselves.

And then we refuse to acept the reality so we elect fantasists, our own current shower of "not quite-free market" true believers, now in Australia, and Norway and so on. We elect "conservatives" because, having changed everything about the way we live, we suddenly don't want to change away from the good times and we are suckered into believing that they can, somehow, magically as it happens, be prolonged forever.

They can't. We are living through the early phase of how that "can't" turns into "didn't". And if you aren't, right now, taking substantive action to wrap up, you will be naked in the cold; probably praying for more global warming.

In the hands of parasites and thieves

We expect the Americans to try and steal everything that is not nailed down, its the normal process of the empire to appropriate everything. But to find a New Zealand government ministry assisting the theft is a bloody disgrace.

A rural library in Horowhenua says a United States company has hijacked the computer system it invented and taken the trademark on its Maori name.

The Horowhenua Library Trust devised a software system called Koha 12 years ago to manage catalogues and lending information.

The system is free and widely used by other libraries, churches, schools and corporations around the world.

However, the trust's head of libraries, Joann Ransom, says the American company LibLimehas been granted provisional rights to the name Koha by the Ministry of Economic Development.

She says LibLime is trying to adapt the Koha system for its own private client base.

"We did something really good and we gave it away to the world and it's been a glorious thing globally for 12 years. And now this American corporate wants to take it," she says.

Ms Ransom says she is astounded an international company could trademark a Maori word.

The library has three months to object to the decision and Ms Ransom says it has little money to pay for a legal case.

via www.radionz.co.nz

We live in a world where only those things that are done for profit may be done and that anything being done without a desire for profit can be treated as optional until some way can be found to profit from it.

Those who have assets that are not being used for profit can have those assets expropriated for the benefit of anyone who seeks to profit from those assets. 

Theft of IP, theft of living treasure in the form of the Maori language within which Koha is a significant cultural factor, theft of the value that has been created by a great product that enables libraries all over the world to conduct their business without paying excruciating fortunes to commercial interests.

And there is the crime that Koha has committed. Because we have now reached that stage where any task done for free is defined as theft of profits from someone trying to profit from that activity and that must be stopped.

The people in MED who have sanctioned this are complicit in the crime and at the very least need to be hauled into the street,tarred and feathered and dumped in Wellington harbour then charged with polluting the environment.

I will also give good odds that someone will, once the deal is done, get "head hunted" by an affiliate company for a nice lucrative job. No crass, brown-paper-bag-full-of-cash corruption is needed in this corrupted system, just a nod and a wink.

Actions needed.

1. Internet NZ needs to step into this and fund the case against this theft
2. Tweet it, FB it, letter to the editor it, and for Kiwis 3 days out from an election, kick some pollieass.

What a disgrace.

#NetHui and Digital Literacy

At last week's excellent NetHui, run by Internet NZ, I was asked to plug in 5 minutes worth on Digital Literacy. As usual, I tried to give it a bit of a spin. (starts at 41.12 and runs 6 minutes - the cut [poor sync] is Download Nethui_digital-literacy)

Here's the full version that probably takes a bit more than 5 minutes.

As one of the other presenters suggested, Digital Literacy means different things to different people and I want to pick up on some points raised by Mike Dickison and maybe be push them out a little, perhaps just shove them off the cliff.

For me digital literacy includes knowing when to take one of these and stick it in your mouth.

The reason for this is simple; in Miami Beach on Memorial Day this year, a bunch of out-of-control cops pumped over 100 shots into a private car in a public place, killing an unarmed black man inside (now there's a surprise) and wounded some bystanders.

A young man called Narces Benoit saw what was happening and whipped out his cellphone to record the scene. One of the cops noticed what he was doing, broke off his shooting gallery duties and came charging at Benoit, waving his gun and screaming at him to get out of his car and hand over the cellphone, which he did.

The cop them smashed the cellphone under his boot and arrested Benoit. Nevertheless, within a few hours, the video of the event was going viral on Youtube because, when he saw the cop rushing at him, Benoit had the presence of mind to take out of the phone his digital media storage card and put it in his mouth.

The difference between Benoit and the cop is what I call Digital Literacy.

A few months ago in the Australian Navy, a female recruit was having a sexual relationship with another recruit. The guy in question thought it would be terribly cool to capture the "action" with his webcam and broadcast it to his mates. She was not happy and complained to her commander about the breach of trust and privacy. He essentially told her not to be a spoilsport and swept the matter under the rug.

The young woman became even less happy and shared her experience on facebook. Within days her commander and his boss and his boss and HIS boss were all publicly on the mat, caps in hand, staring at their shoes and explaining HOW they were going to solve the problem of their appalling leadership.

The difference between the young woman and the Australian Navy is what I call Digital Literacy.

About the same time, footballer Ryan Giggs was having an affair with model Imogen Thomas and when it was discovered he sought the help of the UK Supreme Court which obligingly issued a "super injunction" forbidding the publication of the facts.

Within hours, over 70,000 Twitter users had turned the super injunction into a legal fiction.

The difference between the Supreme Court and Ryan Giggs fan base is what I call Digital Literacy.

And all over the Middle east and North Africa this year, people have risen up, trying to throw off a generation of oppression, corruption and violence against them. Now we have had revolutions for a long time, but in the past they have needed a core of intellectual, philosophical and operational leadership, surrounded by a cadre of activists willing to take the message into the community.

Those roles are now being taken over by the whole community using social media tools. It is that takeover and the loss of the privileged position of leadership that I call Digital Literacy.

In Christchurch's major earthquakes, at risk of their lives and while their buildings and their city crumbled around them people grabbed their cellphones and videoed the event as a way to record their own experience to share with others and possibly to provide evidence of what happened to them if they didn't make it out.

That too I call Digital Literacy.

Literacy of any kind is not just being able to read and write the words, it is understanding the meaning, the significance and the context of the communication, then knowing how to manipulate them.

The best example I can think of is the advent of film to entertainment. The first films were little more than stage plays with a camera placed in front of them to record the action. But it wasn't long before we saw the appearance of film literacy, using the unique language of the cinema to tell the story in its own way. The language includes backgorund music, closeups, tracking and pan shots, framing and the million other ways to use a camera that are not available to stage plays.

So we cannot expect that Digital Literacy will look in any but the most superficial ways, like hard copy literacy. In fact, by my definition Digital Literacy is happening all around us, all the time, with increasing frequency.

For 20 years we have talked about the ICT Revolution, blithely ignoring the fact that all revolutions break stuff, and the thing they break first and most irreparably, is the status quo, to expect the revolutionaries to restore the powers of the old guard is nonsense.

Digital Literacy does not consist in being able to write a CV in a word processor nor manage our accounts with a spreadsheet, they are far too often, a way for the old guard to try and force the revolution into a mould with which they feel comfortable.

Our problem is that digital illiteracy is rife in Government, business, education, health, justice and the NFP sectior, very often among those who are pushing hardest for solutions.

The real digital literacy challenge that we have is to shift the old guard into actual digital literacy so that our organisations, which have real, and vital, work to do, can engage with, communicate with, work with an increasingly digitally literate community; so that they can swim in that literacy instead of drowning in it as they are doing right now.

MY problem is that I   have no idea how the hell we are going to do that.

Digital Literacy does not consist in being able to write a CV in a word processor nor manage our accounts with a spreadsheet, they are far too oftten, a way for the old guard to try and force the revolution into a mould with which they feel comfortable.

The real Wikileaks secrets

Most of what we have seen from the Wikileaks cables is mere confirmation of what we suspected all along, mostly that our politicians and other leaders routinely lie to us about what they are doing and, especially, why they are doing it.

In some cases that leads to dead people as have illegal or unwinnable wars such as in Iraq and Afghanistan and it is seriously rich to have people with buckets of blood on their hands lecturing Wikileaks about the possibility that people may be compromised.

There is a difference between those who cause harm inadvertently while trying to out a criminal and those who commit the crimes in the first place. Ask any cop who has accidentally killed someone who walked into the line of fire at the wrong moment, for example.

But the real secret that is causing so much panic is not the diplomatic chitchat and scandal, schadenfreude-inducing though that may be; what is causing all the sturm und drang is the meta message that is coming down the line and will get much liuder and much clearer as the commercial and banking data comes out.

That message is this, the game is rigged. Like this, for instance

TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – A WikiLeaks cable indicates that BHP Billiton tried to sabotage a proposed investment by China's Chinalco in rival Rio Tinto, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

“The cables sent from Federal Treasurer Wayne Swan's chief of staff to US officials describe how BHP "played its cards with consummate skill" in lobbying the government to delay a decision on a deal between Rio Tinto and Chinalco,” the ABC report said.

In February 2009, Chinalco agreed to invest $19,5-billion in Rio Tinto and its operations to obtain an 18% stake in the world's third-biggest mining company, which at the time was battling to shift debt.

But Rio broke off the deal in June, opting instead for a big rights issue and a since-scrapped iron-ore joint venture in Australia with BHP.

The Chinalco agreement had followed an earlier failed hostile takeover bid by BHP Billiton for Rio Tinto.    

All of the players involved knew what was going on, not one of them lacks the resources to know what the others are actually doing behind the scenes, the only people who must not find out that the pollies and the captains of industry are rigging the game is us.

As long as we can be convinced that we have to play the capitalist (or communist or theocratic) game and that there are rules which, if followed, can lead to "success" we will keep doing our best and blaming ourselves for any failures.

But once we see clearly that the whole game is rigged by those who have been playing longest, we will first withdraw our participation and, when they try to enforce play, out will come the torches and pitchforks.

THAT is what is getting so many panties in a bunch in the capitals of the world.

The damage done by Wikileaks

I'm sure that it comes as absolutely no surprise to any diplomat nor their employing government, that their counterparts from other nations routinely lie to them about pretty much everything. Nor should it come as a shock that some of their counterparts think of them as idiots or worse.

A diplomat is someone who lies professionally for his country and any diplomat not fully aware of that is a liability and should be fired forthwith.

So it is unlikely that the Wikileaks data dump provides anything more than confirmation of normal suspicions and, being diplomats, these people will have no trouble whatever continuing both to deal with, and lie to, each other with unruffled feathers for many years to come, their personal flutterings soothed by regular application of canapes and booze.

On the other hand, what the leaks can very much damage is the credibility and safety of governments at the hands of their employers, viz, us.

While most of us have a default position that our masters, elected and otherwise, treat us and our aspirations and needs with dismissal when it is not outright contempt, it is another thing altogether to discover how regularly and egregiously they betray our interests in the pursuit of their rarefied and esoteric goals in the Great Game.

Wikileaks has the mission of fleshing out and adding fine detail to those betrayals and in doing so they undermine the pretenses and obfuscations and credibility, the authority of nation states in relation to their own people.

THAT is why the bastards are screaming in moral panic; that is why they are plotting the destruction of the torchlight shone straight into their corrupted hearts.

That is why we all have a duty to support Wikileaks, because it has the potential, at last, and in fact, to keep the bastards honest.

Update:  What is the betting that, if sweden is able to have Julian Assange extradited, the rape case will be dropped but he will be held because there is an application from the US for his extradition to their jurisdiction? I'm going with about 80%.

Plus, after spending so many uyears in a very happy association with sweden and its reputation for openness, I'm bloody horrified by their role in this.

More sustainability BS

I can't believe that we are still reading this stuff. We have secret to sustainable paint. Don't get me wrong, there is every reason to try new stuff and push the limits as far as they can go but where the hell was the journalist's mind here?

Resene believes it has identified the secret ingredient that will allow it to produce the world's first sustainable paint.

In August the paint-maker was the inaugural winner of What's Your Problem New Zealand?, a competition set up by the Crown research institute Industrial Research.

The prize was $1 million of research, and Resene has wasted no time in getting its project under way to develop a waterborne paint that is based on resins made up of 80 per cent sustainable ingredients.

Waterborne paints at present use acrylic as a resin, and existing environmentally friendly alternatives contain only 30 to 40 per cent sustainables.

The key is to find a substitute that will allow it to make a paint based on resins made of 80 per cent renewables.

The company will only say that the ingredient will be non-cropping (it won't compete with food crops for space) and is likely to come from existing industrial waste streams.

So lets go through that again shall we?

Resene believes it has identified the secret ingredient that will allow it to produce the world's first sustainable paint.

sustainable - Wiktionary
1. able to be sustained
2. able to be sustained for an indefinite period without damaging the environment, or without depleting a resource; renewable

OK? Simple; at the end of the day we have as much of the same quality of resources as we started with. So, how does it measure up?

The prize was $1 million of research, and Resene has wasted no time in getting its project under way to develop a waterborne paint that is based on resins made up of 80 per cent sustainable ingredients.

Weasel number one. to put it another way, this paint is 20% UNsustainable. Now, unless you can throw out of the formula the 20% that is not sustainable, then as soon as you run out of the unsustainable ingredients, you stop making the paint. Here, take enough food for a walk across the Nullabor plain and 80% of the water you will need. Have a nice trip. There is no such thing as percentage sustainability, your ability to produce anything is absolutely limited to the least available element. When that runs out, you are done.

Waterborne paints at present use acrylic as a resin, and existing environmentally friendly alternatives contain only 30 to 40 per cent sustainables.

See above, it doesn't matter whether your sustainable elements are 10% or 99%, its the non-renewables that will kill you. Now, not adding to the environmental load is in itself a good thing so 80% renewables is better than 30%, but sustainability it isn't.

The company will only say that the ingredient will be non-cropping (it won't compete with food crops for space) and is likely to come from existing industrial waste streams.

More weasels. If the sustainable elements comes from existing waste streams then they are absolutely dependent on the continuance of those waste streams in sufficient quantity to feed the sustainable paint mix. If those waste streams are legislated out of existence, or if they are generated by non-renewables, they too are going to stop and the sustainable paint is wholly dependent on the least renewable constituent of the other company's waste stream.

Furthermore, if the recovered ingredients are themselves composed of non-renewable atoms, Resene has shifted the problem exactly one step and, while they may have reduced some costs by being able to discount the waste content of their providing industries, they have exposed themselves to all the uncertainties that those industries have to deal with. I would bet they have increased their business risk by 50% or more.

I'm all for safer paint, I'm all for products that remove anything from the waste stream that can be reused as something else, but I'm 100% against misrepresenting this as sustainable, it's not even close.

Reality checks and data points

This piece from CIO.com is a nice reality check and the general principles apply to everyone, not just IT people. Retire? How About Never?

Overall, the recession has had far more of an economic impact on late-middle-aged adults. In an April Pew Research Center study of 2,969 adults aged 50 to 64, nearly 75% said the nation's economic problems are making it difficult to afford retirement.
Click here to find out more!

Nearly two-thirds of those surveyed in that age bracket said their 401(k) accounts or individual stocks have been clobbered, with two in 10 claiming that their investments have lost 40% of their value and another four in 10 saying nearly 20% to 40% of their retirement funds have been erased.

I have never believed that I would be able to retire, not just because I could not save enough to do so, but because I have known half my life that when the moment came to kick back I would be doing it with millions of other boomers whose removal from the "productive" economy would shrink that economy and make it too small to support us.

I've also been pretty much convinced that rule number one of investing is "never give your money to someone else to play with on your behalf, never, ever, no, I really mean it, never"

So I have paid off my mortgage and I'm building an urban homestead where we are aiming to be able to live, not just survive, on about $200 a week in current dollars.

While most of the rest of my peers have spent their lives trying to get rich enough to retire, I've spent mine learning to live poor.

My wife is a teacher on a 4 year contract and she has 2 years to go. Here's how I rate that contract.

• Chances of it being renewed on similar terms - 20%
• Chances of being significantly cut on renewal - 40%
• Chances of not being renewed 20%
• Chances of being bought out before the end 20%
• Chances of surviving any of those otucomes, pretty good.
  

Now eher are some more data points.

1. 56 year old family member on contract for a company that provides training to large insurance and financial companies. Unpaid for several months, yesterday asked me for a loan to get through Christmas
2. 58 year old CFO for several medium sized north American companies. Laid off in march, 10 months on global search for new job. Nothing
3. 58 year old former exec and successful business man. Lost his company 3 years ago, still no job and about to run out of money

Just people close enough to hear about their actual problems and 2 of those in the last 4 days. Interestingly, all three are still in denial about their real situation, still looking for the silver lining that tells them all is going to come back to what they fondly believe is normal.

Economic recovery? Not close.

This thing hasn't even cleared its throat yet and as the CIO peives goes on to say, "there is no place to hide in this economy"